Patrick deWitt (Undermajordomo Minor) and his trademark irony return in a pithy tragicomedy touched by the absurd.
Bon vivant widow and devout cynic Frances Price and her codependent adult son, Malcolm, are out on the streets of Manhattan after their inheritance runs out. After the liquidation of their assets, mother and son quietly sneak out of their suites at the Four Seasons without paying their bill and skip the country on a passenger ship bound for France.
Malcolm leaves behind a fiancée who still loves him; Frances leaves behind a scandal surrounding her seemingly callous reaction to the death of husband Frank years ago. With them comes Small Frank, a housecat that houses Frank's spirit, according to Frances. Crashing at the vacant apartment of Frances's best friend, Joan, the Prices grapple with ennui and existential crises. When Small Frank goes missing, the resultant panic beckons a host of house guests including a private investigator, a clairvoyant and a doctor who brings his winemonger on house calls.
While their excesses of behavior frequently cross into the territory of the ridiculous, deWitt keeps mother and son from becoming unsympathetic by imbuing the pair with a tragic history. Frances hides heartache under a brassy veneer of caprice and money, while Malcolm lives in a state of adult adolescence that stems as much from genuine fondness for his mother as from her refusal to let him grow up. Named after a colloquialism for leaving a party without saying goodbye, French Exit provides laughter but finishes with a small, deep cut to the reader's heart. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads